Brian Dugan is eligible for death penalty, DuPage County jury rules

Killer of Jeanine Nicarico, 10, now hears evidence against him -- including other crimes -- that could send him to death row

October 08, 2009|By Ted Gregory and Art Barnum, Tribune reporters

DuPage County prosecutors began outlining the frightening litany of crimes committed by Brian Dugan after jurors in his sentencing hearing on Wednesday determined the former Aurora man is eligible for the death penalty for the 1983 kidnapping, rape and murder of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico.

At the same time, defense attorneys are trying to save Dugan's life by contending he came forward to confess to the crime 24 years ago, a gesture prosecutors rejected until relatively recently, when they decided to pursue the death penalty against Dugan.

It's a complicated debate that jurors will be asked to untangle over the next several weeks while determining whether death is an appropriate sentence for Dugan. On Wednesday, jurors took 45 minutes to determine unanimously that Dugan's crimes warrant consideration of the death penalty.

"During the course of his lifetime, you will learn that Brian Dugan ... has repeatedly taken advantage of others, for property, for sex, for whatever he wants," State's Attorney Joe Birkett said in opening remarks of the sentencing phase of the hearing Wednesday. "You will learn that Brian Dugan is a remorseless psychopath."

In a one-hour statement, Birkett highlighted about a dozen rapes or attempted rapes and two sexual-assault murders attributed to Dugan, now serving two life prison terms and a 155-year sentence for the crimes. Dugan committed those acts in addition to the crimes against Jeanine on Feb. 25, 1983.

A grand jury indicted Dugan in 2005 for the Nicarico crime, and in July he pleaded guilty.

Birkett noted that Dugan's "horrendous record of crime" began in 1972, when Dugan was 15 and apprehended for vandalizing a school. He moved on to burglaries, robberies, drug possession then assaults, Birkett noted. Victims included his brother, a nephew, an Elmhurst schoolteacher, a 10-year-old Lisle girl and several women in the Aurora area, Birkett said.

While in custody in the kidnapping and rapes of three women in 1985, Dugan was charged with the abduction, rape and murder of 7-year-old Melissa Ackerman of Somonauk. In November that year, Dugan pleaded guilty to the Ackerman crime and to the abduction, rape and murder of Geneva nurse Donna Schnorr, 27.

In pleading guilty, Dugan received two life sentences and the lengthy prison term.

During those 1985 plea negotiations, Dugan brought up his involvement in the Nicarico crime, Dugan defense attorney Matthew McQuaid told jurors Wednesday. McQuaid acknowledged that Dugan agreed to plead to the Nicarico killing if prosecutors waived the death penalty.

But Dugan also was motivated in part, McQuaid said, by trying to prevent the executions of two Aurora men, Rolando Cruz and Alejandro Hernandez, who had been convicted of the crime in 1985. The men were later cleared, and refinements in DNA testing showed with certainty Dugan committed the Nicarico crime.

"If he would have kept quiet, two men would have approached execution," McQuaid said. "A life sentence was appropriate in 1985, and nothing has changed."

McQuaid and other defense attorneys are contending that Dugan's attempt to plea should persuade jurors to give him life in prison instead of the death penalty for the Nicarico crime.

"Dugan is trying to help," McQuaid said. "He never wavered. He never said, 'Go pound sand.' All he gets is that he is facing his own execution."

Birkett conceded that Dugan's statements may have helped investigators clear Cruz and Hernandez but said Dugan's impact was "minimal at best."

McQuaid also said he expects to present two psychologists who will testify that "Brian Dugan's brain is not normal," that he is a psychopath.

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tgregory@tribune.com

abarnum@tribune.com

More on the Dugan case: Read about Nicarico killing and this hearing at chicagotribune.com/dugancase